Solar Villages for Sustainable Development

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1 Solar Villages for Sustainable Development I M Dharmadasa Solar Energy Group, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield S1 1WB, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) , Fax: +44 (0) , Dharme@shu.ac.uk Abstract "Solar Village" project has been designed to use clean energy technologies to empower rural communities to accelerate their social development and poverty reduction. This project started with a Higher Education (HE) - Link programme funded by the DFID (Department For International Development - UK), managed by the British Council and co-ordinated by the author. The HE-Link programme continued for about eight years in the 1990s, while the solar village was designed, piloted in September 2008 in Sri Lanka and monitored for four years. The project is now entering the replication phase within and outside Sri Lanka. This article presents the concept behind the project, activities taking place in the pilot village, its impacts and advantages for the whole society and current replication plans. This project can be modified to suit any community according to their social requirements, geography and the climate. 1.0 Introduction "Solar Village" is a cluster of remote villages where no modern facilities are readily available and solar power or wind power is used to supply power and clean water to uplift their standard of living. Solar village is a project, designed by the author over a long period of time while co-ordinating an HE-Link programme with Sri Lankan universities in the 1990s. It empowers needy communities to rapidly develop themselves and escape from poverty traps. The aims and objectives of this project include many practical social development routes. Some of these are; empowering rural communities by introducing clean energy technologies, improving water and food security in deprived communities, up-lifting their living standards while finding solutions to climate change, reducing the burning of fossil fuel and improving the environment, taking new technologies from laboratory to the society for sustainable development and guiding them to escape from poverty. 2.0 Solar Village Concept The "Solar Village" concept builds on the theme "Use of clean energy technologies for social development and reduction of poverty". This project needs to identify methods to create wealth using indigenous energy sources to help the community. The wealth created should be managed by a committee selected by the community in order to empower them. Established 1

2 schools, universities or any other institution should be involved in directing and guiding the community for their rapid economic development. Teachers; university lecturers; political, community or religious leaders or any other organisation should take the lead to initiate these projects in addition to their routine job functions. Seed funding should be raised within a specific country itself in order to establish these projects, and should come from local governments, banks or industry. By applying solar village concepts, the communities can be rapidly developed with their own initiatives. Figure 2. Opening of the pilot solar village in Sri Lanka in 2008, and the solar powered water pumping system used in this project. 3.0 Activities in the Pilot Solar Village The pilot solar village consists of 3 villages with 140 families in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Main lively-hood is farming and modern facilities are not readily available. Replacement of the diesel water pump by a solar powered water pumping system provides clean water for drinking and other activities. Consumers pay their water bills to a common bank account and village committee manages the system and these funds to use in various development projects. Annual revenue from this system is ~Rs.300,000 (~ 1500) and most of this amount was spent for purchasing expensive imported diesel. The introduction of solar power enables the community to save all this revenue to use in development projects within the village cluster with the advice and guidance from the project initiators - the author of this article and his network in the case of the pilot project. The village community involves in various projects such as tree planting, organic farming reducing the use of toxic chemicals, bee keeping, improvement of the village school, temple, nursery and the library. The villagers are becoming self-help minded due to the empowering nature of the project. 2

3 Figure 3. "Seed" of a solar village, consists of solar panels, a DC pump and a storage tank. Once the seed is planted, the community could expand activities around it developing themselves 4.0 Benefits and Impacts of the Solar Village The provision of clean water supply to the community throughout the year is the immediate benefit. These areas suffer from lack of clean drinking water during the peak of the dry season and suffer from kidney diseases. Complete reduction of the noise and air pollution from diesel engines and reducing CO 2 emission are other immediate benefits. The main community centres; school and the temple receive free water supply from the system. Solar powered water pumping converts sunlight into real wealth reducing country's ever increasing fossil fuel import bill. Saved funds are managed by the empowered community with improved transparency, i.e. with reduced corruption. These then help in funding various development projects within the community such as contributing to school building, and expansion of the solar panel system by adding more panels, i.e. sustainable development. Teachers are no longer wanting to leave the severely difficult school in this community, but are rather working with encouragement and enthusiasm generated by this new project. The school ear-marked for closure, before the start of this project, now become 4th out of 455 primary schools in the region. Empowered community are now coming together to help themselves, through sramadana (voluntary work) and creating scholarships for children within the community. The environment becomes greener and pleasant due to tree planting projects and eventually the country becomes a "green carpet" when the project is replicated throughout the country. Reduced alcoholism and crime due to the involvement in development projects reducing idle time have been observed. This project fulfils four Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) namely, providing primary education, empowering rural communities, establishing environmental sustainability and reduction of poverty. 3

4 Figure 4. The school ear-marked for closure, before the start of the Solar Village project, now thriving with new buildings initiated by the community. 5.0 Current Replication Plans The solar village is a "Social Science Laboratory" for each Faculty in a university, and hence extremely useful in training graduates with social responsibilities. Replication is currently planned with increasing public awareness of the project in different countries (Maldives, Bangladesh, India, Jamaica, Kenya and Nigeria). The author and his worldwide renewable energy network is encouraging all possible institutions (Schools, Universities, Ministries and other relevant organisations) to replicate this project within Sri Lanka and outside. As a first step, a power point presentation is webcasted in English ( for dissemination of this experience and knowledge. This presentation will be webcasted in several other languages (Sinhalese, Tamil, Malay, Arabic, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, ) in the near future for wide publicity round the globe. This process will add the eighth MDG to this project, "the establishment of a global development programme", satisfying five MDGs within one project. Figure 5. Public lectures in schools and activities with higher authorities for replication of solar village and other clean energy projects. 4

5 6.0 Conclusions A "Solar Village" project has been successfully designed, piloted and monitored for four years. The project is now entering the replication phase within Sri Lanka and outside. The project can be customised by modifying according to the requirements of the community, geography and the climate. This project opens the doors to other potential development projects, drying and packaging of excess agriculture products, starting of cottage industry like brick making industry, built in eco-tourism etc.. Solar village project brings sustainable development without polluting the environment. This contributes effectively to reduction of the fossil fuel import bill of the country, reduction of CO 2 emissions and contributes to the reduction of the effects of climate change. Rapid replication of this type of project will reduce urban migration and convert the Planet Earth into one pleasant "Global Solar Village". 7.0 References 1. Solar Villages for Social Development and Reduction of Poverty. I M Dharmadasa and K Deheragoda ( 2. Solar Villages for Social Development and Poverty Reduction. I M Dharmadasa and Lalith Gunaratne, Proc. of "Solar-Asia 2011" conference, July 2011, Kandy, Sri Lanka ( About the Author: The author is a graduate from university of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, and completed his postgraduate research in university of Durham on solar energy conversion, by winning an open commonwealth scholarship in Since then, he has continued his research work and professional activities in the United Kingdom, in both academia (Peradeniya, Cardiff and Sheffield) and in Industry (BP-Research Sunbury). In his research and development programme, he has successfully supervised 17 PhD theses to date and currently supervising 6 PhD candidates. His single authored book on "Advances in Thin Film Solar Cells" was released in September In addition to his Lecturing and R&D work at Sheffield Hallam University, he has been involved actively in public understanding of science work on "clean energy technologies" over the past 25 years. The "Solar Village" project was born as a result of this continuous effort to help needy people round the globe. 5